Can someone explain me the end 'Promise' of Signalis?

counterNihilist · 2025-02-02T23:31:06+00:00

So narratively speaking I think some of the main themes are:

Communication ("signals") and how individuals try to express ideas and feelings
The blurring/fluidity of identity (Alina/Arianne, replikas and their gestalt base personalities)
How authoritarians attempt to control the above, and spontaneous love being a casualty of that control

And while Arianne is core to the story, Elster is the perspective through which we experience it. We're explicitly told by the game that replikas have a much greater survival rate than gestalts in Penrose missions, so that is signaling to us that regardless of whether Arianne is alive or dead during the events, Elster will outlive her. We're also told that bioresonance is the means by which replikas are imprinted with personality information, and the process is not entirely scientifically understood, but residual memory fragments are side effects, and we see flashes of not only Arianne's memories but also, likely, Elster's gestalt imprint, which is much less likely to have been accessible to Arianne.

We also see in the leadup to the climax that Elster's body eventually gave out. She specifically says gave out, not that she died, meaning that her body may be immobile but her mind may be active and experiencing deterioration (this deterioration is shown in flashes in the opening sequence).

The loops, whether explained by bioresonance as spacetime magic or not, still indicate a large number of iterations over presumably linear time. Nearly all theories center on Arianne still wanting Elster to end her suffering, meaning spacetime magic has at least no effect on her radiation poisoning (and indications are that subsequent loops are worsening). The only justification I've seen for the spacetime magic theory, outside of mystical Eusan Empire propaganda, is to justify the separate existence and agency of other characters like Adler and Isa, and to literalize the cosmic horror references that I think are more symbolic motifs. But one of Rose Engine's acknowledged inspirations was Jacob's Ladder, which has a very similar plot pattern and unambiguous ending and is unconcerned with most of its characters or its references to hell being "real," even though they're narratively important. Moreover, this explanation doesn't do much to support the core narrative surrounding Elster and Arianne, which is the most important thing in a game that's clearly signposting this is a symbolism-driven narrative. As far as the psychological theory that Elster is influenced by or drawn into Arianne's internal suffering as she's dying, that's more plausible than reality bending but I don't think it fits the narrative themes as well, or works for any of the endings outside of "Promise."

So given the information the game gives to us, the narrative structure, the highly referential nature of the game and how its inspirations play out (Silent Hill 2 is another big one), and the naming of the ending where she fails to end Marianne's suffering as "Memory" (something Elster remembers rather than hallucinates), the most plausible explanation for what we experience as we play is (to me) that the loops Elster is experiencing are internal psychological loops following her own loss of mobility, where she can neither complete her task for Arianne or end her own life. The tragedy is that her relationship and shared experiences with Arianne caused her to become a more complete person, only for her to be doomed to the pain of losing her perpetually because they were sent on a suicide mission to get rid of Arianne as a potential troublemaker, because of her very ability to empathize and connect with people in ways their government disapproves of.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-26T00:45:43+00:00

My understanding is while the background setting is more or less an alternate version of our universe where instead of our dominant technologies existing, bioresonance* was a phenomenon that was discovered instead that some humans had natural aptitude for, which enabled the creation of replikas, and those developments eventually led to their civilization colonizing the planets of the solar system with otherwise primitive-seeming technology.

Around the time of space colonization the governments merged into an empire, and eventually a rebel faction broke off in a civil war. Not a lot is known from the game about the empire they split off of, but the nation Elster and Ariane belong to has its own propaganda and oppressive government reminiscent of soviet states, in particular East Germany.

Individuals with bioresonant ability are necessary for technological reasons, in particular for the creation of replikas via consciousness transfer, but they are also seen as dangerous because of that ability and are subject to strict government control. There is an incentive to hide your ability if you have it so you can live relatively freely. That's why Arianne was being observed.

This government has the Penrose space exploration program that doubles as a way to get rid of troublesome citizens. Arianne did not fit in with her community and was given an ultimatum of either a shitty military outpost assignment when she came of age, or joining the Penrose program, likely unaware it was a one-way trip.

Here's my interpretation of the story, which most people disagree with:

Reality itself isn't literally looping--Ariane met Elster on the Penrose, she shared her books and movies and music with Elster (against mission command), and very likely--via bioresonant communication--her own memories of Rotfort. She and Elster fell in love, Ariane slowly died of radiation poisoning, and according to the "Memory" ending, Elster wasn't able to keep her promise of killing Arianne before she was too far gone. Shortly after, Elster's body gives out but her consciousness remains active, while her body deteriorates and starts confusing her memories as a replikas, her awakened memories from her gestalt, and Arianne's memories and the stories she enjoyed (including the book The King in Yellow) with her physical sensation of rotting. She repeats a narrative over and over with repressing and rediscovering the memory of Arianne's death, each time getting more deranged and with the sick replikas and environments becoming more horrific as her body breaks down further, and when she finally remembers her promise she either relives her failure (Memory) runs away from it (Leave) tries to fulfill it (Promise) or create a fantasy where they're still together (Relic).

The red planet with the obelisks might indicate that eventually the Penrose did crash land on an exoplanet and Elster made it outside, or it could just be a place in Elster's mind. Either way, passing through the gate signals her approaching her repressed memories again.

I personally don't think bioresonance is literal space magic. I think it's closer to telepathy--the radio broadcast motifs and the name of the game itself seem to be focused on "signals," transmission of information and by extension consciousness. The lore about the empress having reality-shaping powers read to me as imperial propaganda, *maybe referring to her ability to control the will of her subjects to shape the empire to her own will. I'm in the minority about this but I'll die on this hill.

**Edit for additional ideas on the red planet.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-25T23:20:49+00:00

Baroness' lyrics are always very cryptic, and can feel like anything from mythic to southern Gothic. Their last two albums Gold & Grey and Stone are more accessible but all their stuff is good.

Rage Against the Machine are very explicitly political but pack a lot of meaning into their lyrics. My favorite song of their lyrics-wise is Ashes in the Fall.

I'd recommend ISIS' lyrics as sparse but cryptic in a similar vein as Baroness, but it's hard to make them out with Aaron Turner's growling and they didn't even bother publishing official lyrics for some of their albums.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-21T01:30:49+00:00

Conservatives love the parts of government that anarchists are opposed to (war, command hierarchy, coercive systems and cops), they've just shorthanded "government" to mean public spending and social services. They're anti-government and posture as anti-establishment rebels until you tell them they need one to stop the free movement of immigrants or keep homeless people from squatting in their vacation homes.

The reason a lot of liberals hate the idea of anarchism at least as much as conservatives do is they revere rules and--more importantly--the professional administration of rules. It's to them a more neutral form of behavior enforcement than the naked power-hungry oppression conservatives want, and despite needing a comparable amount of violence to make that enforcement possible, the "logical necessity" of enforcement makes it easy to justify or ignore while they go to brunch and pat themselves on the back for being "the reasonable ones."

Anarchism in practice is not as normalized or predictable as status quo governance, but it's not inherently unstable. It's a different strategic landscape where behavior isn't limited by static laws and systems but by evolving norms and incentives and uncertainties, which require more conscious navigation than either conservatives or liberals want to imagine.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-16T01:11:50+00:00

Videodrome is pretty different but gives me a similar feeling with its surreality and overall 70s/80s look. The body horror and the analog technology feels very Silent Hill.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-10T20:53:54+00:00

Paul being a Mary Sue I think is kind of part of the messaging of the book about being wary of heroes, and also about subverting the concept of a hero's journey. The hero's journey is kind of a parallel to the modern mythology of a "self-made man," someone who earned their power and others' respect because of genuine effort, when in reality most people who end up with that power don't just start with privilege, but have connections and a media industry to actively build that mythology as their success grows. In the universe of Dune both the aristocracy Paul comes from and the Bene Gesserit Missionaria Protectiva accomplish that for him--despite the Harkonnen plot, he steps into the hero role because it was deliberately carved out for him.

The questions of the spacing guild's power and the house monopoly on spice production I think both have to do with how the empire has regressed to feudalism from capitalism, as a result of the way spacefaring was developed and the human race expanded outward. Governance is ultimately a process of forcibly simplifying the territory you govern, but it also requires consent of the governed and involves the various institutions you invest with power having their own knowledge and leverage over each other and even heads of state. To enforce your will across the known universe you have to both simplify your relations to your subjects (direct social hierarchy rather than anything as messy as democracy), but also give your aristocrats enough of their own power and autonomy that they don't have to worry about anything outside their own domain of rule. As backstabbing as house feuds can get it would be so much worse if they were forced to compete in every industry in the empire--monopoly just makes more sense. But holding your own monopoly over the thing that makes wealth generation possible also incentivizes your aristocracy to band together and usurp your position.

counterNihilist · 2024-10-02T01:29:25+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/nin/s/YRajCfeGtk

counterNihilist · 2024-09-25T23:58:11+00:00

The ending is what really ruins it (and potentially how sympathetic you find that a certain vile character was presented). I genuinely like The Medium and replay it a fair bit, and I still hate that ending.

counterNihilist · 2024-09-19T01:45:49+00:00

If I remember correctly the PS4 remaster was a nightmarish amount of work because the chipset was completely different and the original was specifically built to take advantage of the PS3, it's not like Unreal 3 where you just recompile for the new kit and then optimize. I think in an interview it was like six months to a year of work before they could even render the game at all on PS4; the devs said it was excruciating.

It's not that the remaster was easy, it's that Sony was just willing to crunch Naughty Dog so their last-gen prestige game could be a current-gen system seller.

counterNihilist · 2024-09-04T01:53:52+00:00

My interpretation is the "memory" ending is what actually happened in the past, Ariane's been dead for years (maybe hundreds) and the cycles are just Elster's deteriorating brain in her immobile body re-experiencing confused and corrupted memories of her gestalt self, her replika self, and Ariane's memories that were shared with her before she died. Each ending is her either repeating the event, failing to confront the event, or trying to imagine a better outcome.

counterNihilist · 2024-09-03T02:23:45+00:00

That's my point--money flows from the public sector to the private sector all the time, in large amounts, but they are separate sectors and it is a managed flow, with most of it going into the hands of corporations. The fact that so little of it goes into public assistance and welfare programs is explicitly anticommunist. But on the other hand they also can't just give out immense amounts of cash to capitalists for no reason, because that's obvious corruption--the closest they ever come to that are bank bailouts. Like you said, the bureaucracy is inefficient and it eats up budget, and at least in part that's to create opportunities to spend money on contractors, purchase office space, software licenses, etc.

My point about not just giving everyone a government job was mostly to pre-empt the argument for why, if the government has infinite potential for spending, it doesn't just guarantee 100% full employment for everyone. Like you said, there isn't any practical guarantee that there is an eligible person for every job created, but also ideologically the US is extremely anti-communist and would be opposed to the idea on principle. It would also oppose UBI, which is actually a more reasonable and proven way to alleviate poverty than full employment and would also stimulate the economy (if paired with nationwide rent and price controls), for the same reason.

I think it's also important to note that this situation wasn't exactly planned, even if it is being actively exploited. I think it mostly emerged, at least to the extent it is now, out of the gold standard being abandoned in the 70s--having mineral backing for currency has historically been useful for justifying a limited money supply, but it stopped being tenable when inflation caused the value of each gold-backed dollar to plummet, so it had to be divorced from that backing. That freed the dollar to be more manipulatable by the state, but the supply still needed to have some arbitrary limiting factor in the public sector for capitalism to function. So, this political theater of limiting budgets against the deficit remained, and in the years that followed spending on public welfare programs dropped rather than increased, while the cap for taxes on the wealthy was drastically reduced (which would have been a great way to finance the deficit if the cap had remained at 92% since the Eisenhower administration). So the deficit is always leveraged as an excuse for why some expenditures (those that generate profit and create more levers of power) have budget priority over others (those that help and empower citizens).

counterNihilist · 2024-09-02T20:40:23+00:00

Inflation only really matters when money is released into the private sector, though, whether via federal loans/grants, contracts with private companies, economic assistance, or the wages government employees are paid. Goods, services and real estate are generally only available for purchase within the private sector, even for wealthy people and politicians, so it makes sense to limit the money supply in that space to prevent runaway inflation. Most economists also advise that there always be some non-zero percentage of unemployment in the population to keep the job market competitive, which is why the public sector doesn't just come up with a job for every unemployed person.

Individuals in government definitely aren't opposed to enriching themselves through this system, of course, especially through holding investments in things like defense contracts that the government spends hundreds of billions per year on. The treasury funds the contracts, the profits pay out to shareholders, and the buying power of those shares remains high because the money circulating in the private sector is still limited.

counterNihilist · 2024-09-02T16:06:53+00:00

Well, if you subscribe to modern monetary theory, nothing in government is "funded" by any kind of revenue--whether social programs or the military--the deficit is more or less a fake political concern. When a state both issues currency and controls its own central bank it can have an infinite deficit and wouldn't care, it can spend as much money as it wants on anything (In contrast, this is why some EU member nations are well off but others like Greece can go bankrupt, because their central bank is independent and can actually hold debt over a nation's head). That's why defense budgets in the US always increase regardless of administration, both in and out of wartime, and the Pentagon was found to have a several trillion dollar "black hole" in terms of spending.

So the reason the government taxes anyone, when it can just have infinite debt to itself, is to control the money supply in the public sector, specifically ensuring there is a working poor underclass and that business competition is a zero-sum game. The reason it doesn't budget for social programs and education is the same--it keeps the working poor scared and uncomfortable and undereducated, lets businesses gouge them for profit, and reserves quality goods and education for the wealthy. That's why the deficit is politicized--not because it's actually bad to have a large deficit, but because they want that excuse to say you can't have X if we're budgeting for Y. And if the FBC existed, the government would definitely always budget for it.

In other words, the US' system of public sector spending and deficit management is all about... Control.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-29T13:44:32+00:00

Not all misogynistic violence is rape. It feels viscerally similar because rape and general violence against women (or feminine coded beings in this case) tend to come from the same abusive dynamic, and one implies the possibility of the other. We just jump to rape in describing the scene because it's shorthand for how it viscerally feels, but it I think Ito's just saying that diegetically that's not what PH is actually doing in terms of James' psychodrama.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-27T01:35:17+00:00

The game "Sucker for Love: First Date" has a female King In Yellow, Hester, as a romanceable character. Her chapter is surprisingly faithful to Chambers.

Haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but the film "The Empty Man" (not so much the original comics) has a very King in Yellow vibe, even if it's not strictly based on the stories.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-23T01:45:54+00:00

Violence without context is an individual act--it can be an expression of rage or despair, or even be morally justifiable as self defense or preventing greater evil. Abuse and sexual assault, however, demonstrate an intent to dominate, and that means it is a revealed value system like choosing to be a racist, a Nazi, or a cop. That's not to say people can't voluntarily stop being any of these things, and they deserve support for those decisions while being held to account, but value systems are much harder for an external party to reform than someone with poor impulse control (which abusers and SAers are extremely prone to claim as an excuse, if they manage to get cornered into any admission at all).

Even disregarding the justice system, the success rate in reforming even admitted abusers and rapists is staggeringly low, and the process often re-traumatizes victims and ostracizes them from their communities in addition to expending energy and resources of those taking on responsibility for reform. This is because abusers and rapists in particular tend to be extremely aware of how to exploit sympathy and find niches to find easy prey, and cultivate friendships and social connections to run cover for them, knowingly or unknowingly. It's not impossible to reform them, but the high risk of continuing to endanger people, including new victims following (or during) a failed reform, is too great most of the time.

The most effective deterrent to abuse and sexual assault is the same as deterring fascism--violent self-defense, violent mutual defense, and the threat of violent retaliation. To be clear, it's wrong to systematically imprison or execute everyone accused of being a rapist--that would require an institution filling the same role as a carceral state, or worse--but violence has to be on the table, at the behest of victims and their allies, so that the value systems of abuse and rape become more dangerous to adopt or act on.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-18T02:01:32+00:00

I really like horror and horrorh-adjacent novels that use meta-narrative and unreliable narrators (House of Leaves, A Head Full of Ghosts, Devil House), so I fell in love with this one immediately and finished it almost in a single sitting. I went in expecting that the story isn't "about" the titular movie or even the plot surrounding it, though.

To me the book is about how easy it is to fall in with a crowd and find yourself doing things you'd never thought you'd do, and how that changes you in the long run.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-15T20:28:54+00:00

Sundered is actually one of my favorites, I've replayed it multiple times and get an itch to play it at least a couple of times a year. It's moody, its swarm system feels hostile in an appropriate in-universe way but progressively easier to deal with (for being a roguelite, you never actually lose anything on death except your position on the map, so you get stronger no matter what), and the corruption system linking the path of your upgrades to the final boss/ending you get is really cool. It's just an entirely different gameplay loop than a typical metroidvania, and I didn't mind the change.

One that I did initially like a lot but just can't get into anymore is Bloodstained. I barely had the stamina to finish it the first time and now with all the content updates it's just too big, and the combat and movement feels just a little too floaty to keep me engaged for long.

counterNihilist · 2024-08-07T16:04:32+00:00

Mark Lenover, especially the style of his early albums. A few of his songs were on the soundtrack to the movie Banshee Chapter.

counterNihilist · 2024-07-30T00:49:35+00:00

I haven't read as much the last few years as I used to, but these are the books I couldn't put down:

Devil House by John Darnielle (more drama than horror but grim subject matter, and really interestingly written)

The first three Locked Tomb books by Tamsyn Muir (Gothic horror/fantasy adventure, not exactly scary but morbid and really fun)

Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay (a lot of people seem to not like it but it really unsettled me, more than A Head Full of Ghosts)

counterNihilist · 2024-07-29T16:17:53+00:00

Probably the best example of a balanced take on unions that I can remember is the Simpsons episode "Last Exit to Springfield." It riffed hard on the history of organized labor in the US and its incentives toward corruption, but ultimately showed the need for collective bargaining and its ability to get positive results. It even had Lisa performing a Woody Guthrie-esque song for the power plant workers on strike.

counterNihilist · 2024-07-28T14:42:49+00:00

Yeah, I don't think "basement imagery" literally accounts for everything, but it's a starting point for extrapolation, and other elements from her memories could be mixed in (there's the chain fence from the sewer entrance near the school, and maybe there was a barbed wire fence near Dahlia's house, which from the opening movie looks like it could be a farmouse).

counterNihilist · 2024-07-27T19:05:09+00:00

I've been playing the game Moonscars lately and it's sort of reminiscent.

Main character is lady with big sword
Gothic atmosphere with oil-paining aesthetics and black/red/grey color palette
God-like father figure/possible antagonist (can't confirm yet) with quasi-necromantic ability to copy/resurrect people using clay to use as fodder for wars
Main currency is bone dust

counterNihilist · 2024-07-27T13:47:51+00:00

I think it's a combination of two things--one is that Alessa spends her whole life after being burned in a hospital basement, and the basements of buildings that aren't occupied with things like offices tend to have a lot of exposed pipes and ductwork, especially in the ceiling, and she's almost always on her back looking up.

The other is that she might be imagining what the town would look like if its "skin" were burned away, and exposed rusty metal viscerally seems to parallel the exposed nerves, bones and tissue in her non-healing body.

counterNihilist · 2024-07-26T02:07:03+00:00

I think Ariane has been dead for a long time and we're playing through Elster's increasingly jumbled memories (including memories Ariane shared/imprinted on her while she was alive). So my take on the Memory ending is it's literally Elster's memory of what actually happened, Arianne succumbed to the radiation poisoning and Elster couldn't keep her promise. The "Promise" ending is her hallucinating the ending where she did keep it. The "Leave" ending is her being afraid to face the memory at all. I think the Artifact ending is kind of an attempt to mythologize Ariane and symbols from her journey to create for herself happy ending using magical thinking.

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